


Dog Days

by Querulousgawks



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence -Summer After Season 1, F/M, Friendship, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-25
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-14 16:25:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2198676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan plans to burn down the community pool. The community has other ideas. Told from Veronica's point of view, with the character list expanding in later chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Mac swept into the Mars apartment, coat stretched protectively around her laptop case. “I hate these afternoon storms. Isn’t it supposed to _never_ rain in southern California?” She tossed her soaked jacket back out in a heap on the balcony, but squared the case on the side table with care. Veronica grinned, appreciating the ritual. If there was one consolation prize- besides increased odds of survival- for her new case-free mocha-slinging lifestyle, it was the chance to have friends instead of clients. To learn their quirks, and not just their secrets.     
   
"You can't trust pop meteorology nowadays." Veronica shook her head with exaggerated sadness, then looked down as Backup beeped. “Either you picked up imitations from that parrot, or you’re lying on my phone.” He shifted to rest his chin on her thigh, and she saw the screen flash from just under his beefy shoulder. “There, the less unsettling answer. Although it could have come in handy, I guess.”   
  
Shaking water onto Mac as he came through, Wallace dodged her half-hearted smack and rubbed his hands together, saying, “So! What’s today’s safe, wholesome entertainment? Croquet? Ninja turtle reruns? V?”  
  
She barely heard him, staring down at the message on her phone. _Duncan says your jackass is going after the community pool tonight._  Going after - of course. She closed her eyes, remembered herself in pink, headed to summer school with a bag lunch for a boy like it was 1952. She shouldn’t have needed it spelled out for her, wouldn’t have, before Normal Living and –and- whatever she and Logan were, had slowed her down. The toadies with their gas cans had barely registered over her awareness of his bicep by her cheek, his fingers light on the tendons of her wrist. Her mind on his mouth instead of the weak lie coming out of it: _stupid._

She'd let the pause go on too long, her friends were waiting, but her chest was too tight, she couldn't pull in the breath to speak. Get it together, Mars. Shake it off, make a Donatello crack, pretend it's not happening. Act normal. But she was tired of it already, the sunny facade, even when she wanted to stay curled up inside it forever.

Looking up, finally, she pressed her lips together hard before answering, "today’s entertainment is…me freaking out about my boyfriend?"  
  
There wasn’t impatience or contempt on their faces, though Wallace drawled "break out the popcorn!" just as Mac said, "hmm, a niche film." Veronica smiled a little and held out her phone, her hand not quite steady.   
  
Wallace blocked Mac’s grab for the phone and read it aloud with her crowded over his elbow, his eyebrows knitting together as he took it in. "Logan stop eating his Wheaties, again?"  
  
"Meg sent it." She said quietly. "I should be grateful. She's barely talked to me since school let out."   
  
Mac's eyes were still on the screen. "So much for character arcs."  
  
"Ex _cuse_ me?"  
  
"Oh, you know, someone hurts an 09er, he takes it out on innocent people. Summer sequels are the worst." Mac's voice had been teasing, earlier, but this had a bitter edge.   
  
Veronica studied her, hesitating between defensiveness and concern. "And where do the MacKenzie's swim?"  
  
"The NCC - that has to be the one. We haven't been all summer, since Ryan broke his arm. It's been driving him crazy," she paused, then added, "he gets his cast off next week. I'll be physically dragging him out at closing time every day."  
  
Assuming it was still there. Veronica thought about...she couldn't piece it together. Hot air and the smell of gasoline; Logan's hand in her hair and hers holding tight to his collar; finding shards of glass in both, after. Mac's resentful eyes, and Wallace's worried ones. Mrs. James saying 'white knight syndrome' and her dad saying, ‘you can't save 'em all, sweetheart.’ Like that ever stopped them from trying.   
  
She could call him. Expose his secret, read him the riot act, and listen to his bullshit town-at-war excuses. Try to stand by him, until he and Weevil exhausted their rage or somebody else died. She could plead with him to be safe while he begged her to stay out of it, like a normal girlfriend, at least normal for the kind of Spaghetti Western they seemed to be enacting.

Or she could dump him, and work on the kind of normal her dad wanted for her, shifts at Java the Hut and bland, high-achieving guys who only used gas cans when they helped little old ladies mow their lawns. Let Logan spiral into arson and booze and whatever sexcapades came with the full Casablancas Friendship Experience. Her stomach turned over at the thought.

Or…or they could catch him, they way she’d caught card cheats and secret societies: make a scene, force a resolution, see where the bodies landed. Why should she choose, if she could make him do it? She eyed Mac, who was still frowning at the phone. Even if he wouldn’t stop, he could damn well look his collateral damage in the face.

A plan unrolled in her mind: vague, still, but rapidly developing. It wasn’t a safe idea, particularly. But Logan Echolls wasn’t the only one in Neptune with a reckless streak. Smiling, Veronica turned to her friends. "Still looking for some drama?"  
  
Mac looked up sharply at her tone, her face transformed in an instant from sullen to intrigued. Wallace held on to his concern for a couple of seconds, but then cracked, shaking his head at them even as he grinned. "After the last couple of weeks? It better be _Shakespearean_."

“You know, I think we might be able to manage that?” she said, and smirked back, catching her bottom lip with her teeth as her mind whirred. They needed access, a member list, a timetable. Abruptly remembering Meg, she grabbed her phone back to type out: _Thanks for the tip. Want to help stage a very showy intervention?_ “Especially if we can recruit some drama queens.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Research and revelations on the waterbed.

They set up precarious council on the waterbed, the two girls on their laptops with Wallace, a notepad propped against his knees, sandwiched between them so he could see both screens. Mac brought up the Balboa County Rec page, and instantly scooted away, grimacing. Veronica leaned over to see, rolling her eyes as the Triton symbol throbbed in a welter of links. Mac was a delicate flower when it came to web aesthetics. “Shitty Flash animation isn’t illegal, Q.”

“Wait until I’m in charge,” Mac promised, clicking through to the facilities page. “Okay, there’s a subscription form. I can probably get the member database from this.”  

“What are we even looking for? A neighborhood watch?” Wallace asked, skeptical. Veronica grinned. It _was_ hard to imagine, the law-abiding segment of Neptune banding together for block watches. The rich installed alarms and locked their gates, while everyone else kept their heads down and hoped for the best.

“We need…middle-grounders. People who won’t call the cops, but won’t let it happen, either. People with a stake, but not a grudge.”

Wallace tilted his head at her, making Mac smirk and Veronica narrow her eyes. He said, “you think there’s still anybody like that out there?”

Probably not that many, after Logan’s case was thrown out and the police seemed to give up on Felix’s murder altogether. She pushed the thought away, reminding herself that there would be even fewer if the 09ers started an arson spree, and said lightly, “with Logan’s pretty face on the front page? It had to thaw some of those hearts.”

“Felix was pretty, too.” Mac muttered.

 _Getting pretty old, Mac._ Veronica tried to keep her calm, failed. “Felix _went there_ to beat the shit out of him!”

“Like Logan’s never done that? It doesn’t mean he deserved to die!”

Wallace leaned backwards, his face impassive, as the girls snapped at each other. Catching sight of the bedboard digging into his shoulder blades, Veronica sighed and sat back, saying “I know. I’m sorry.”

Mac picked at the penguin sticker on her laptop. “I’m sorry, too. I mean, it’s not Logan’s fault.”

“I didn’t think you…”

“Cared? Felix was a dumbass, and the PCHers are assholes, but - you moved here when you were what, ten? I’ve known him since kindergarten. I watched him and Molly Fitzpatrick fight over who was in charge of the playhouse.” Mac took a ragged breath. “I remember when he was the only kid in class that was shorter than me, and now…” She tipped her head back, and Veronica watched the light from the window brighten her blue streaks, catch the tears on her lashes. She didn’t know what to say.

Wallace did, of course. He nudged Mac and said, “You played house? Mrs. MacKenzie, homemaker?”

“I said I watched! From the swings, like a normal outcast,” Mac shoved him into Veronica, who flopped over with an “oof” and smiled up at her, tentative and sideways. Mac smiled back, wiping her eyes, and admitted, “except once Wanda Varner got a trowel from somewhere, and we all tried to find out if there really was a body buried under the front stoop.”

Wallace shook his head. “ _Neptune_.”

They untangled themselves and turned back to the screens, peace restored for the moment. Mac tapped furiously while Wallace and Veronica studied the Google Maps view of the community center, looking for stakeout spots. “Better if we got inside and waited for closing, maybe?” Veronica murmured.

“Wait for smoke inhalation is more like it. You just stay outside, Mrs. Frankweiler.” Wallace said, and added defensively under twin surprised glances, “Darrell loves that book. We haven’t told him that the hiding-in-a-museum kind of thing usually only works for white kids.”

Mac and Veronica both winced, and Veronica was grateful when Mac brought their attention to a new window on her screen. “I thought I remembered this – the pool made the news a couple of weeks ago. Annette Daniels started an endowment to get it renovated.”

“Wait – wasn’t she in-“

“That lifeguard soap opera that ran forever in the 80s?” Wallace leaned in, squinted at a shot of an older woman in a white shift, feet dangling over the diving board at the Neptune pool. “Is she from here?”

“ _Former resident’s donation brings a rising tide to the NCC_ ,” Veronica read off. “She looks familiar…”

Mac had the IMDB up in a new window. “She’s done some commercials, since.”

“That’s not it,” Veronica said slowly, trying to trace the memory. If she pictured the woman younger, with heavy braids instead of her close-cut hair…she felt the sudden rush of discovery, that sense of a hairline fracture that would break a case, to borrow a cliché, wide open. ”Can you see if she has any kids?”

“Two kids. Arthur’s not linked, but Lorraine has one acting credit” Mac clicked through, “…as a backup dancer?”

She _knew_ it. “Logan has no idea who he’s messing with. Lorraine Daniels,” Veronica grinned fondly back at the woman giving the world a hard stare from the screen, “is Loretta Cancun.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Veronica lays some groundwork and Meg asks for help.

Veronica decided to try out an impression on Cliff - for fun, she told herself, but really to see if she was rusty yet.  _Six weeks out of the biz._ She winked at Wallace then pursed her lips, pulled herself up to sit rigidly against the headboard as Cliff answered absently, “McCormack & McCormack, right here when you’ve been wronged.”

“Unlikely _,_ Mr.McCormack," she barked in the hoarse, clipped tone of the Balboa County prosecutor. A crack, sounding gratifyingly like a chair coming down off two legs onto four, echoed through the phone. “Asleep at the bar again, I see,” she added, going for world-weary. Mac snorted, glancing up with a grin before returning to scroll through the membership list at the pool. Wallace tapped the screen to make her pause and scribbled something indecipherable on the pad.  _At least they’re not bored._ She was still leery about dragging them into this, her – whatever- with Logan, but it had to be better than  _Ghostbusters_ again.

 _Focus._ Cliff had cleared his throat and spoke rapidly, “I assure you, Ms. Delaney, I am entirely..." he trailed off, "Veronica?”

Definitely rusty. “What gave me away?”

Cliff sighed. “However persistently she haunts my nightmares, Virginia Delaney actually just went to hell –that is, retirement in Albany – last month. Took me a minute to remember. Aren’t you a little old for prank calls?”

“Bet you were actually sleeping, though.” She was rewarded by his chuckle. Catch off guard, then amuse: she was halfway to a favor already. “I have information that might interest one of your clients, and wondered if you could put me in touch.”

There was a long pause. “I would usually say, my clients are your clients, V. But I got the impression you didn’t _have_ clients anymore, given the near-death experience.

“Isolated incident. And this isn’t a case, just a…wacky teen hijink. Can you have a single hijink?” An irritated hum came through the speaker. She hurried on,“anyway, the odds are good that Ms. Cancun won’t want to lock me in a freezer.” She heard Cliff suck in a breath just as Wallace gave her a ferocious scowl. “What? Joking is coping,” Veronica muttered. He just shook his head.

Cliff’s yelp drew her attention back to the phone – he must have processed the other part of that sentence. “You want to talk to _Loretta_?”

“On a first-name basis, huh?” she said. “Baseball bats can really bring people together.”

“ _Ms. Cancun_ and I are…”

“Spare me the details, Cliffy,” she said, grinning in triumph. He was in full scramble now. “I heard someone was planning a...prank, on one of her mom’s projects. I thought she might like to know, and also, possibly, help prevent that prank from happening. Discreetly.”

“Her mom – look, V, Loretta Cancun and ‘discreetly’ don’t belong in the same sentence. And if her mother’s involved, she’s likely to be indiscreet to somebody’s kneecaps. You sure we can’t do this the old-fashioned ‘do Lamb’s job and leave him with the paperwork’ way?”

“ _No cops,_ Cliff, please,” she bit out, her pleasure in the banter fleeing at the thought of Logan arrested again. She hated this protectiveness, the guilt, hated that she had to choose. _That’s why you’re outsmarting him,_ she reminded herself, _to make your own set of choices._

“Wacky teen hijinks, huh?” Cliff’s voice sounded sympathetic. “Look, I’ll invite Loretta to coffee, at the office. You bring a half-dozen of those Java éclairs, and you might be able to make your case before she just takes a hit out on your prankster. But I’m not making any promises. I’ll text you a time.”

“You’re the best, Cliffy, bye!” she sang out, punched the end button before he could ask any more uncomfortable questions.

Step one complete. Next steps, possible outcomes, contingencies were running on a loop in her brain. She was teetering between rage and worry for Logan; between guilt for not going to the cops and triumph at the thought of one-upping Lamb, again _._   She had a dozen other things to orchestrate before they had a shot of pulling this off, and she ran the risk of humiliating herself in front of friends and strangers if they failed.

It felt  _great._

Maybe she shouldn’t have blown off that therapist. She looked up, caught Wallace’s understanding gaze.

“Sounds like we’re back on Mars,” he said softly.

“A normal summer might have been ambitious,” she admitted.

He slung an arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t want to say anything, but personally? I thought you were aiming low.”

She leaned gratefully into him for a second, but when her phone beeped again she dove for it, glad to be distracted before things got too sappy. Meg had texted her back, finally, but not with an answer about helping.  _Can you call me?_

She wiggled up from under her laptop and held it out to Wallace, who made a greedy  _gimme_  gesture. “Don’t get too deep in Tetris, Fennel, I’ll be right back after I talk to Meg.”

“Me? Pure research, Mars. Laserlike focus.”

Veronica wandered into the living room and hit redial, tamping down nerves. Meg was probably just tired of texting. Her ruthless grammatical accuracy on a T-9 keyboard would wear anybody out.

“Veronica?” Meg’s shaky tone over the receiver chased away the optimism. “I’m sorry to…do you think you could give me a ride?”

“Where are you?” The LeBaron was in the shop, again, its last major collision having rendered it even less reliable. But Mac would probably lend her the Beetle. 

Meg pulled in an audible breath, then said more evenly, "Planned Parenthood, actually." Before Veronica was finished reminding herself not to jump to conclusions, she added, "Duncan drove me, but he - he had to leave."

Instant, protective outrage bubbled up in Veronica. "He  _left_ you there."

"Well." Was that amusement, somewhere deep under the distress in Meg's voice? "I'm locked in a bathroom behind the security barrier to protect me from half the deacons at First Protestant, so it's a little hard to tell. But," there was a crinkle of paper, then she really did laugh, if bitterly, and said, "I'm pretty sure he's been arrested for assaulting my father." 

 _Jesus._ Veronica closed her eyes, leaned back into the room to say, “Mac, can you run a check on the municipal water system, too?”

“For…?”

“Testosterone poisoning. Duncan attacked Stuart Manning.”

Mac and Wallace exchanged glances. “Don’t look at me,” Wallace said, holding up his Gatorade bottle. “Tap water is for chumps.”

His words pulled a reluctant grin out of her, but Veronica’s stomach was churning. She had worn bruises on her collarbone for a week after the last time –she hoped it had been the last time- Duncan had lost it. Had she really gotten that through to Meg, in her uneasy recounting of that day? Was he just white-knighting it, now, or were his episodes returning even after Lillie’s murder was resolved? Would his fucked up notions of protection only put Meg more at risk? Was he just telling himself that he was doing it for her, while indulging some need –okay, she wasn’t thinking about Duncan anymore.

It took true selfishness to be worrying over her own love life while her friend hid out in a paper gown. Veronica shook herself and spoke into the receiver. “Hold on, Meg. We’re coming.” 

**Author's Note:**

> This work was inspired by petpluto's comments on Logan universalizing his revenge, from the Navarro family to the community pool:  
> http://petpluto.tumblr.com/post/92533950520/ive-been-thinking-about-my-reaction-to-logan
> 
> So...posting is looking to be more like once a month. Also looking for a beta. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!


End file.
